


night dawns; day breaks

by thescyfychannel



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Affection, Anal Sex, Bad Days, Biting, Confessions, Crying, F/F, First Time, Gentle Sex, Laughter During Sex, Love Confessions, M/M, Marking, Past Parental Issues, Rough Sex, Rough Sex Turned Gentle, Trans Female Character, Trans Female Jade Harley, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26076829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescyfychannel/pseuds/thescyfychannel
Summary: Stories twine together in lovely, unexpected ways. How else would they weave? Hearts know no other way.Dave and John learn one another anew.Rose and Jade share their understanding together.Hearts know no other way.
Relationships: Jade Harley/Rose Lalonde, John Egbert/Dave Strider
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18
Collections: Drone Season 2020





	1. burn fire bright, burn darkest night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [planetundersiege](https://archiveofourown.org/users/planetundersiege/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> EB: Do you ever just—do you ever just, you know, fall madly head over heels in love with someone, then carry that secret, burning, passionate flame for _ever_ and just...not ever tell anyone, least of all the object of your affections, for fear that it might somehow, some way, be snuffed out?  
> EB: Do you, Dave? Do you?  
> EB: Okay, cool. Neither do I!  
> TG: john what the fuck  
> TG: _dude_
> 
> The fun thing is, they're both sort of lying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Johndave confession sex! I imagine it sweet yet sensual and a bit embarrassing as they try to navigate just confessing and then having sex right after. Lots of praise and kissed (and maybe some happy crying?)."
> 
> hope this is close enough. had the idea for an out of sequence number count and wrote them sort of in that order but also sort of in numerical order depending on the part? and then i went back to edit the sections. a lot.
> 
> yeah i almost left one of them in the wrong spot ngl  
> anyway: dave is even, john is odd

.: let _me count the ways._

X: You let yourself burn a little in the red of his eyes, you tangle hands into silken hair more meant for a careful brush than your work-rough fingers can provide. He kisses you, and it's coming together, it's sense all over again, it's salt and sweet and a little more than your heart can actually take.

VI: He laughs (rare ruby jewel of a thing) and your head snaps to follow him even as you're meant to be walking away, sliding your glasses askew (so are his), heart a thousand times hardier in your chest. It will beat itself right out your ribs, if you're not careful, you know this, you know it. You want to know him (you do know him) more than you've ever wanted anything before. You need to catch your breath; you wish you never would. Dave Strider. Dave _fucking_ Strider. He's going to drive you the absolute sweetest kind of mad, you are absolutely, eagerly, urging him along.

IV: You shoulder him aside on your way to the fridge for something else to drink. "Sit down!" is all you can think to say, your voice rough in your throat, awkward in your mouth. "You're a guest in my house! My dad would be _horrified_." That touch—it's trite. It's electric. It's all you can think about.

V: John's grinning at you. All you can think to do is ramble and rave. You're too easily lost whenever he looks at you like this, and oh, oh, _oh_ , you've made him laugh—

III: It's going well, you think. Reasonably so, at least. At least, it's been a solid three (or four, or five, maybe) hours and nobody's dead yet. You've played a round of every multiplayer video game within easy reach, not staying on one for more than the required amount of time for a bout, as if you're both jittery with something you can't name. You've got no idea what's getting to him; you're entirely certain you know what's getting to you. Finally: "I'm so fucking thirsty I'd jump—" a gesture at the beautifully crafted characters on the screen "—literally any of them—hey mind if I get something to drink?" You're already standing. You needed (desperately needed) to be on your feet, to be away from him for jut a moment.

I: You've been looking forward to (dreading) this week-long sleepover since the notion of it first popped into your mind. Pros: A whole fucking weekend of John, John, John. Cons: A _whole fucking week_ of nothing but John. You're not sure you'll survive. You're not sure you'll want to, after the terrible bliss of a whole week of being so near to him.

II: You've been dreading—thrilling to, ecstatic over, maddened by—this week-long sleepover since you'd managed to get all your plans in order and promptly realized what it meant. Dave, to yourself, for a full seven days! Could you even handle being alone with him that long without bursting into some kind of embarrassing shame?

VII: When he hands you the soda (what kind, what flavour, you don't care), his fingertips brush over yours; you imagine they linger, then imagine they slide up to your wrist. Then you blink up at him, and, _oh_ —not imagining at all—

VIII: "Dave, I—I'm in love with you."

IX: "I'm in love with you too. John. _Fuck_."

XI.

The soda drops, forgotten onto the floor, as you pull him down into your arms. "No one drink that later," you say, astounded that you only sound half as shaky as you feel. "It's gonna be hell for the carbonation."

John laughs, and it's as sweet a sound through tears as it ever was through smiles, and you haul him against you, hands in his hair and mouth on his pulse. You want to kiss that laughing mouth; you never want that laughter to stop. You, Dave Strider, are a hell of a conundrum and perfectly willing to live out your life that way. " _Dave_ ," he says, shallow insistence as you avail yourself of his warm skin. You've seen the darkness of it covered, uncovered, bruised and sweating and bleeding, you've loved him every second and wanted to touch even more. "Dave, c'mon, I'm a mess—"

"You're beautiful," you insist. What else can you say to a sky-eyed god but the truth? What else would you want to say when it makes him blush so well? "You're so fucking beautiful, John, seriously."

"I like your eyes so much," he whispers, with all the air of someone imparting grave confession. You kiss him again, for that, and then you're lost in kisses for a time, soft words of love passed between one another like you've forgotten how to keep them close.

You're not sure who strips who down first. All you know is that you blink, and he's bare before you (bare _for_ you), and you're stripped just as naked for him, the blushes that cast his skin beautiful a burning pink sunburn all over yours.

"Don't hide," he chides you, and you want to whine. He's so many kinds of lovely, and you tell him so, but you don't yet know how not to fluster when you're this exposed with him. "I love every inch of you, Dave! And I have half a mind to kiss _every single freckle_."

It's a threat and a promise and you sit bolt upright, smacking your head off of his. "Ow, _fuck_ —"

"Owwwww." He's still grinning, though, even rubbing out the sting (even reaching with his other hand to rub out yours), and you're only dropped back down onto the couch with a kiss and the following promise of several more. "I won't do it this time! But if you keep it up, I _definitely_ will."

"I'll be good," you promise (lie, you can't be, he brings out desires for all kinds of devilry in you), sprawling back out and spreading your legs just a little wider. "C'mon, John, I got you."

He's more nervous than you are, you think, and you're briefly grateful for all the cautious, then curious, then profoundly explicit experimentation you'd done over the course of your slow crush-to-abiding-love for John Egbert. "Uhm," he says, having just overturned the bottle of cold lube onto his palm, and you nearly laugh.

"Start with one finger," you tell him, and he sticks his tongue out at you, and you _do_ laugh—it lasts right up until that one finger pushes up against the rim of your anus. "Oh, fuck." You drop an arm over your eyes so he won't see your face, and he growls until you move it. "John, c'mon, leave me a little dignity."

"Think of it as payback!" He's careful with that finger, curling it up and stretching you out, and the way his eyes light up is a hell of a sight to behold. You're glad you're not missing out. "You—do you do this often?"

"Uh," you try, then glance heavenward again, pink blush rapidly going a much darker shade. "Uh, yeah. I—yeah. Hey, why do you keep lube in your living room?"

"Forgot to put it away after the last time I jerked off!" He sounds unrepentant, a cardinal sin when you'd meant to fluster him. You're pretty sure he is, because he follows it up with: "Do you think about me when you fuck yourself?"

Oh, god. You've got nothing left but honest and apparent humiliation. "Every time."

His blue eyes flash: " _Good_ ," he says.

John's deep inside you, trembling, and you're gasping out his name, hands in his black hair and thighs pressed to his hard chest, as he fucks into you, steady-slow, following on the beats that you tell him to go. "Harder," you'll gasp out, and he will, hold your hips tight as he obeys, thrusts hitting deep inside. "Faster," you say, and he picks up the pace, hammering into you (hah, fuck, _hah_ ) with all the strength you've sworn over to each other.

"What feels best?" You think he's close, but you need to know.

"Deep," he manages, looking right at you. "Deep, slow? What about you?"

"Try—like that, but lift me a little more—oh, _god_ —"

And you're in no fit shape to guide him anymore, clutching at him as best as you can while he wrecks you thoroughly, while you do your best to do the same, deep and hard and slow, right in that way that bumps up against all the best places of you—

You cry, from the sheer joy of it, when you finally come, and you don't even mind the way your own cum's plastered all over your chest. How could you, when he drops his own tear-stained cheek right next to yours, when he curls up around you and buries himself deeper and lets go?

XII: _how do I love thee?_

XIII: _forever and always._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the . is to represent the 0s roman numerals didnt have


	2. burn fire bright, burn darkest night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know those days where it's like that one song (OOOOOOOO WA WA WA) is stuck on repeat ('CAUSE YOU HAD A BAD DAY) and there's literally nothing you can do (YOU'VE TAKEN ONE DOWN) to make it fucking stop?
> 
> Or those days where you just want the world to shut up and maybe, maybe, just let you live for one goddamn second!
> 
> Those days. Those FUCKING days.
> 
> Those are the days that it's really damn good to have a partner who just gets you. Those are the days that your kind of love is made for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Jade and Rose just coming home and having sex to blow off steam after a long day were they had both gotten pissed off for some reason. It starts really needy and rough (biting and light clawing) but it slowly turns more sweet and gentle with kisses and laughs and whispers.
> 
> I headcanon Jade as having vitiligo and being trans, but you can write her cis too if that's easier. Same goes for Rose, she can be either cis and trans. If any of them are trans I'd really like it ending with any of them finishing inside."
> 
> hey, i hope this hit the right notes. and sorry about the HAD A BAD DAY joke in the summary i couldnt resist it lmao

Some nights your heart is like this: Hungry, hollow thing, aching and craving and wanting and wounded. You hurt, with the whole of it, with loving with your whole body and having the world not always love you back. You bend and breathe with the pain, let it settle into every last inch of you, until you know nothing but overflowing.

Then again, she understands. She always understands. She's built the same way.

Most nights your heart is like this: Wanting and yearning, soft and safe and brimming with the green of a home you'd known for so long it settled behind your eyelids like a second sight, over your body like a second skin. You left home and dressed yourself in its colours so you would never forget.

Your name is JADE HARLEY, and you've had a very bad day.

It wasn't any one thing, really. Death by a thousand cuts, more like, little things piling on top of little things piling up until they threatened to overflow and overwhelm you. The proverbial straw that would break the camel's back, if you didn't prefer to think of yourself as more of a dog, anyway. Dogs pulled shit too! Speaking of—

Checking out the latest on musher Twitter while you wait for your bus to come does _abso fucking lutely_ nothing for your mood, which is when you know that Shit's Fucked. You're in that snarling, scowling mood, hiding it as best as you can behind the blank commuter face almost everyone wore, and all you want to do is get home to Rose and bury your face (fangs) in her shoulder, hold her until you stopped feeling like you were about to burst apart at the seams, hell—maybe she'd want to make a go of it, maybe the two of you would roll around on the floor until you were both spent and happy, and—

A bus comes, and it's a grey slushy day and it's not _your_ bus, and it's the age old story, of course. You get sprayed with ice-sludge-water, and you _shriek_.

You slam the door behind you, when you get home. It's a loud enough sound to get anyone's attention, unless, perhaps, they're in the middle of a video chat with someone on the upper floor, and very carefully _not_ screaming the way their tone of voice definitively suggests that they want to. Great. Good.

Not that you _want_ Rose to be upset, but.

There's something appealing about this being one of those nights. The thought of her hungry heart coming out to play with yours, the ways you'll crash into one another and make some kind of beautiful mess between the two of you—

Your thoughts are wandering, and your hands are too. You need to—

"Jade—Jade, what _happened_ , you need to get out of those dripping clothes—"

Yeah, that.

* * *

Your name is ROSE LALONDE, and you've had an absolutely fucking awful day. 

A call with your mother is a bad way to start things off. You love her. Therapy is a thing you do. A thing she does. A thing you guys sometimes do together. And really, truly, shit's _better_ now, but it was so bad with all the miscommunication and misunderstanding and just... _everything_ , so bad for so long, that even now it's a little hard not to end up at the end of a call with your hackles raised and everything rubbed raw and wrong.

Some nights your mind is like this: Racing through all the worsts, all the dead ends, all the hopeless falling failure that threatens to consume you, that you have to pursue to its very end for fear that you won't be able to pin it down as the lie that it is until you know it inside and out. You burn, with the whole of it, a thousand scars carved onto your ribcage from the inside out, the outside in.

Then again, she understands. She always understands. She's built the same way.

Most nights your mind is like this: Racing and pursuing, falling and consuming, needing to know and learn and follow-chase all the purple prose and hazed over dreams, everything, everything, everything. You want to see it all, you want to understand all you see. You wrap yourself in the sunset colours of your dreams.

But your mother called, and your usual editor is on a well-deserved vacation, and the stand-in editor you had _said_ you didn't _need_ (it's not like the deadline's coming up any time soon, your usual editor had already outlined their plan to be back in time) is nothing short of a massive fucking tool who needed to be told as much on the regular, and then the present you'd so excitedly ordered for Jade had gotten sent to fucking, North Dakota, of all places, and you were really, really, _really_ at the end of your chain. 

You'd snapped at Roxy. Snarled at Dave. Even _Dirk_ had decided to steer clear of your temper temporarily.

Jade slamming the door is nearly a boon. To be sure, it's something that sounds a hell of a lot like impending blessèd relief.

* * *

Rose squirms under you, trying to hook a leg into one of yours enough to throw you off, roll you to your back and keep you there. You don't always make such a show of your strength (unless she asks for it, of course, then you're all too puppy-eager to please), but you're QUITE busy sucking marks just below her collarbone, thank you very much! And the desperate way her nails rake down your back is all kinds of enjoyable, almost as good as sinking your teeth into her shoulder as you shove forward into her, burying yourself between her soft thighs and filling her up in a way that makes you let out a soundless sigh of relief.

Her hands tangle in your long, dark hair, drag along the contours of your body, try to distract you to let her gain an edge—you let her roll you (or maybe she actually rolled you while you were caught up in admiring her, her, her), just to see what she'll do when she's on top.

And Rose never disappoints; it's her turn to bite and pin and suck her markings along the edges of the colour changes in your double-hued skin, to trace out her map of you as you drag claws along her thighs and hips, rocking up into her as she sank down on you, tight and warm and wet, and—

At some point (you don't know when) her touch turned stern, then solid, then gentle. At some point, you switched from nails digging welts in to a grip that might bruise to the barest, delicate, caress. You're stroking her sides, and reaching up to tuck a falling curl of gold hair back behind her ear. She's laughing, as you do, pleased by the touch and smiling down at you. She likes that—when you tuck her hair back, when you cradle the back of her head and look up at her like she's all the light you'll ever need. You like that too.

And she leans down for a kiss, and you drop one on her jaw, first, then her delicate eyelids, and finally her lips, over and over, each touch a promise.

"I missed you today," she whispers, and you pull her into your arms, let yourself comfort and be comforted. "I kept wishing you were home."

"I felt the same," you confess easily, tilting sideways, lying together, hips moving in slow tandem, perfect just like this. "I was hoping I could get home early, surprise you—"

Her eyes don't light up so much as they spark. You love her; you love it. "But everything just kept going wrong?"

She gets it " _Exactly_." You drop kisses everywhere you can reach, her chin, her ears, her neck. "It sucked! And I missed you!"

"I missed you too," she tells you, her hands in your hair and her eyes on yours. You can feel her moving, feel the heating spreading through you slowly even as it starts to pool in you, the impending promise of your climax. "After this..."

"A hot bath," you offer, picking up the pace just the slightest bit. You know how she wants it, you know how she likes it. "We'll sit and talk until the water goes cold."

"Then hop in a hot shower to get off the film from your weird forest bath bombs?"

"They're _natural_ ," you say, mock offended, and capture her mouth once more, one hand in her hair and the other landing on her hip to hold her steady as you bury your last thrust. You had something else to say, you're sure of it, but you're spilling inside her and she's coming hard around you, and all that's left on your lips is her name—

All the nights, every night, your heart is like this: Hers.


	3. the contrivance of the place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You all reach out in your own ways. Happiness tends toward sharing, happy news needs to be shared.

You contrive to meet up with John—some attempt at making up for some perceived slight to Dave is top of Rose's agenda today, and you'd rather be out of the way of the Strilonde mind games. You love them, your extended family-through-Rose, to be sure! But they drive you absolutely bonkers trying to follow along on the best of days, and anyway, you'd been wanting to catch up with John for a while now.

After all. There's apparently been a lot going on in his life.

The two of you meet at the edge of a large, wide lake. John beats you there, and there's a carefully collected pile of flat stones sitting beside him on a driftwood log when you arrive. Unnecessary—the shore is covered in rocks of various shapes and flatnesses—but sweet of him. It's so John. It really is!

And it warms your heart up even before you drop down to sit beside-ish him, the pile of stones between the two of you.

"So," you start, tilting your head just enough to look him over. He's already blushing, which is adorable, frankly. "Dave, huh?"

"Jade, I swear—"

"Come on! It's not like anyone else out here is actually _surprised_." You grin at him, and he shoulders you, a grin—no, a proper _smile_ —creeping over his face. "So seriously, Dave?"

"Yeah," he tells you, and fuck, you've never seen him so happy. "It's kind of great!"

"It really is," you tell him, and the two of you go quiet.

You don't speak again until you're halfway through the pile, two dozen skips between the two of you and a record of eight skips to a stone each.

"How's it going? With you and Rose?"

It's a question as unnecessary as your stones—you and Rose are _good_ , have been for years, and he knows as much, and you know he knows and that he's only asking to give you leave to brag—and it makes you hesitate with your stone in the air, in a way you wouldn't have even a week before, turning your answer over in your mind.

You start turning the stone over the same.

"I mean," you start, your voice soft and low. "It's good—you know it's good, right? It's just—sometimes I think, it's so, _so_ much better than that. Having someone who understands me, down to my soul? We...work. We fit. It's really, _really_ good."

"It's _better_ than good," John says, like he knows, and oh, you know he does, and your heart's bursting for him at the thought of it.

"It's better than good," you agree, and you grin at him as you throw the next stone out, counting ten skips (seven, really), and splashing him with lake water when he dares to disagree.

* * *

TT: Dave.   
TG: whats up   
TT: We're rather lucky, aren't we?   
TG: lmao  
TG: yeah

**Author's Note:**

> with all honesty i wrote about this entire thing for the sake of that last text exchange, it just felt right


End file.
